You can cross this urban myth from your list

March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day. Everyone who drinks alcohol — at least, everyone who ever drinks alcohol with even a modest disregard for their well-being — knows this.

Drinkers are especially excited about this particular St. Patrick’s Day because, well, it’s Friday. Friday goes with booze like St. Patrick’s Day goes with booze; so that makes March 17 a very special evening for all the friends of Bill before Bill got sober. The cops must be thrilled. So you know, the next time St. Patrick’s Day lands on a Friday will be 2023. Hopefully, by that time, most of you will have recovered from Saturday’s hangover.

I’m Irish, but I don’t drink, so I have little to offer you with regard to where and/or how you choose to get hammered this evening. That said, here’s some advice for those of you staggering home March 17: Be mindful of intersections.

As tips go, you may consider this, at once, odd and obvious. But I bring it to your attention, with a degree of urgency, as it’s been only recently that I discovered the truth about intersections myself. Let me explain. I moved here in 1970 from Montreal, where, at the time, pedestrians who stepped off the curb were hunted like Sanger Rainsford in The Most Dangerous Game. My father, trying to get his 14-year-old excited about the move, told me how pedestrians in Vancouver were afforded the absolute right-of-way at every intersection.

Because he was my father and because fathers are always right, even when they’re totally wrong, every intersection in town was mine to wield. And wield I did — for decades and decades and decades.

Then one day, sometime last year, I mentioned this special power to Province columnist Gordon Clark, who in turn told me I was dangerously misinformed. According to Gord, every time I stepped off the curb at an unmarked intersection to exert my rights as a pedestrian, drivers had little more than a moral obligation to not run me over.

This wasn’t something I was going to accept blindly. Gord may be a father, too, and, as such, is never wrong, but, damn it all, he’s not my father.

So I turned to the law on this matter and learned something very important: The Motor Vehicle Act of B.C. isn’t exactly a Stephen King novel if reading enjoyment is the objective. I also learned that Gord was right.

According to the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act under the heading “Rights of Way Between Vehicle and Pedestrian,” the act states: “The driver of a vehicle must yield the right of way to a pedestrian where traffic-control signals are not in place or not in operation when the pedestrian is crossing the highway in a crosswalk ...”

Earlier in the act, a “crosswalk” is defined as: “A portion of the roadway at an intersection or elsewhere distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by signs or by lines or other markings on the surface ...”

So there you go. It’s never easy admitting mistakes, but until some other father informs me otherwise, it appears I have been wrong on this matter for a long, long time.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day everyone. Be safe — especially crossing the street.